Douglas Preston was born in the year 1956 in a suburb known as Wellesley in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended the Cambridge school of Weston. He had quite an adventurous childhood where he lost a tip puff of his finger while riding a bicycle. Apart from this event, he also lost two of his frontal teeth and suffered broken limbs fighting with his brother Richard. Despite these challenges as a youngster Preston was a bright student and excelled in school. Douglas studied Mathematics, anthropology and various sciences at Pomona College in Claremont, California after being rejected by Stanford University. He finally ended up specializing in English Literature.

He was then employed as an editor by the American Museum of Natural History after graduating from college. He later on rose to the position writer, and then proceeded to manager of publications. In addition to this, Douglas was a nonfiction writing tutor at Princeton University. He was also a managing editor of a museum professional journal known as Curator. Dinosaurs in the Attic was his first piece of work which was edited by Lincoln Child from St. Martin’s Press. Child accompanied Preston to a tour around the museum in the middle of the night. The moment they were at the dark Hall of late Dinosaurs, Child thought the setting would be ideal for a thrill, and Relic was born thereafter.

Preston decided to engage in full time writing in the year 1986. He relocated to New York City with all his possessions packed in a Subaru. S. J. Perelman advised him to take advantage of the freedom and flexibility of freelance writing. He published Cities of Gold, which is a nonfiction piece narrating the story of Coronado’s search of the popular Seven Cities of Cibola. Douglas worked with a photographer known as Walter W. Nelson researching through Arizona and New Mexico using horses. They carried the needed supplies and slept under the stars at the end of the day. This was quite dangerous for them because they nearly got killed in the process.

Thereafter Douglas teamed up with Child. They worked on suspense novels with Relic being first on the list. These two team members live a thousand miles apart but with the use of telephone, email and cloud they were able to achieve their goals. Preston equally participates actively in journalism. He writes for magazines such as National Geographic, Smithsonian, New Yorker, Harper’s among others.

On 1st October 1994, Preston’s novel, Jennie was published by St. Martin’s Press. This book narrates the story of DR. Hugo Archibald of the Boston Museum of Natural History. Hugo goes for a research tour to Western Africa and meets an abandoned baby chimpanzee. He then decides to return to Boston with the Chimpanzee who he names Jennie. Hugo took Jennie as his own child and accepted to raise her alongside his two young children. Amazingly, everyone falls in love with Jenny who perceived herself as human. Jenny’s most actions were like that of a human being, from tricycle riding to fighting over television with her siblings. A popular primatologist gets attracted to Jenny and decides to incorporate her in an experiment where chimpanzees are being taught American Sign Language. The suspense kicks in when the experiment is over. The novel pushes us to study the ape, who apparently shares a whole 98 percent of the human DNA. This story is based on a genuine events of a chimpanzee brought up at the American Museum of Natural History. Jenny managed to be an award winning film in Disney Television known as the Jennie project. Apart from this it was translated into several languages, plus, it became a best-seller in the whole world.

Preston decided to move with his family to Italy in the year 2000, for a writing assignment on murder. This did not happen because of the turn of events in Italy. He teamed up with Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist handling a serial killer case of one il Mostro di Firenze. Preston was shocked to learn that his neighborhood had been a crime scene of a two time murder. The serial killer had gotten away with the ritual murder of fourteen lovers. He was nicknamed, The Monster of Florence, thus the title of the book. This book is based on a true story that happened in Florence, Italy, telling the events of the dangerous search in midst of the Italian darkest traditions and history. Finally, they published, The Monster of Florence, on 10th of June 2008. This book managed to be on the New York Times list, for a period of four months. The Monster of Florence also won several journalism awards both in the United States of America and Italy. This book is at the moment being worked on as a film, with the famous actor George Clooney playing as Preston.

Blasphemy was published by Forge books on 8th January 2008. In this novel, Preston travels to the mountains of Arizona where the world’s biggest supercollider which was constructed to expose the creation secrets has been locked up. This machine, known as the Torus, runs via a very powerful supercomputer in the world. This creation is the work of Nobel laureate Gregory North Hazelius. No one has a clue of what Torus is upto, whether it will suck the earth or reveal the creation secrets or it is fighting via satanic powers against God for the heavenly throne. A group of twelve scientists are sent to put it on under the leadership of Hazelius. This information must not be exposed to the entire world but a CIA operative and ex-monk is tempted to reveal the secret that will either save or demolish the world.

Preston is currently serving as a Board of Governor of the Authors Guild. He is a member of the Long Rider’s Guild and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. In addition, he was conferred an honorary degree by Pomona College where he took his studies. Preston is a descendant from the family of the famous poet Emily Dickinson, sexologist Robert Latou Dickinson and opium addict Amasa Greenough.

Master of the standalone thriller genre, Shari Lapena, is back. Author of The Couple Next Door and A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest is the latest novel by Shari. It takes place in a cozy mountain lodge in Winter where various people are staying for a romantic getaway. A blizzard cuts off the power and any contact with the outside world so everyone settles in for the long haul. Then a guest dies. And another. Knowing Shari's other books, this should be one we'll be reading late into the night. For more details or to pre-order, visit our Shari Lapena page.

Recommendations

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Featured Series

Our book series of the month is the Will Robie Series by David Baldacci. If you like Mitch Rapp, Jack Reacher, Jason Bourne etc then you'll love the Will Robie series. These are page turners to the max too and Baldacci knows how to keep you going all night long!

Featured Author

Bill Wenham is the author of various book series including The Inspector Charrington Mysteries and the Inspector Bruce Mysteries. He just started writing in his 80s to follow a life long dream. It’s an amazing story and the books he has written are pretty great too – his passion really shines through. Read more about Bills books.